


The Past Returns

by summerrain24601



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5535866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerrain24601/pseuds/summerrain24601
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Wardens have gathered their allies, and now Alistair and Vhena, along with their companions, are making their way back to Redcliff castle so Arl Eamon can call a Landsmeet. She is finally starting to recover from what happened to her first love, Tamlen, when something happens one night at camp...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ambushed!

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas guys! I've had this one finished for about a week now, so I figured while you're all waiting for me to finish chapter 6 of The Tevinter Seeker, I'll give you this and hope it tides you over until I can get the next chapter finished. xD Thanks for being so awesome about it all! :D

"It was like the archdemon saw us. Saw us! What do you-" 

An ambush, and by darkspawn. The Shrieks that attacked were quickly cut down, with Warden Vhena launching arrows from a distance. But one of them was different from the rest. 

"You… Lethallan…" That voice… She turned, blue eyes wide at the familiar sound of that slightly gravely voice.

"Tamlen…?" she muttered as she approached. She didn't bother wondering why the others were keeping back. Alistair was the only one who knew the full story of what happened before.

"Don't… don’t come near me. Stay away!" Tamlen ran, and Vhena followed him to the edge of camp. "Don't… look at me! I am… sick." Well, she could see that much. 

"We can help you Tamlen," she told him, her voice much calmer than she felt. "You don't need to be afraid of us."

"No help! No… help for me," he insisted. Vhena's vision blurred, and she blinked quickly to force the tears away before they fell. "The song… in my head… calls to me. He sings to me! I can't stop it!" She reached out to him, and he took a step back. "Don't want… to hurt you, lethallan. Please… stop me…" 

"I have to try and heal you Tamlen!" Vhena insisted, shaking her head against his words. She felt her throat burn with the tears that threatened to spill over. 

"Too far. You cannot help me," Tamlen insisted. It was his next words that broke the dam and sent Vhena's tears spilling over. "Always… loved you. I'm so sorry…" Then he visibly changed as something inside him snapped. He attacked, and Vhena had no choice but to pull her blade on him as the others in camp came to her aide.

"Who… was… that?" Alistair asked, looking past Vhena at the body.

"His name was Tamlen," Vhena said, her voice surprisingly steady.

"Tamlen? Then… he was the one who was with you when you…" Realization crossed his face, and he sighed softly. "I'm so sorry. This is what happens when the taint is left unchecked. It's… Better, for him. To have it end. It was a mercy." He sighed again, and Vhena turned away from what was left of her first love.

She looked up from the ground, her gaze meeting Zevran's. The pain in her heart returned at the worried look in his eyes, and she clung to him as she cried. Rather uncharacteristically for him, Zevran stayed quiet while Vhena cried, one hand in the middle of her back while the other rested on the back of her head. He closed his eyes as he held her, genuinely sorry for what had just happened to her. He had been there at the Gauntlet, he'd seen how much she cared for Tamlen. She had finally started to heal from it, too. And then this had to happen.   
___________________________________________________________

"You knew about this Tamlen person?" Zevran asked Alistair once Vhena was asleep. After changing into a dry shirt.

"I… Got a message from Duncan when he was at her clan's camp," Alistair admitted hesitantly. "He didn't tell me details, but that he thought he'd found a promising recruit among the clan. When he got here, I could already tell that Vhena was tainted." Alistair sighed. "I got the story from Duncan later, or the short version anyway. There was this mirror in an old ruin that had been tainted, and Tamlen had apparently been lost through it."

"Through a mirror?" Zevran echoed skeptically.

"Some sort of ancient elven magic apparently," Alistiar said with a shrug. "But right after that, her clan went north. From what I remember, Zathrian's clan was pretty close with hers."

"I did notice that they kept mentioning it to her," Zevran agreed. "Maybe she'll tell us the story?"

"With her reaction at having to kill him?" Alistair reminded the elf with a raised eyebrow. "I doubt it. It's been over a year, and that pain is still fresh." He paused for a moment, glancing in the direction where Vhena had struck down the ghoul that had been Tamlen. "Did you hear what he said, just before she-"

"Yes, I did," Zevran said, a bit too quickly. He gazed into the fire, completely aware that the others were staring at him. "He obviously meant a great deal to her. What is it you're trying to say?" 

"Uh…" Alistair managed intelligently. He sighed and shook his head. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just that… The two of you are… Close…" He fell silent, unable to ask the question that burned the back of his mind. 

"What happens next will be her choice," Zevran said after a moment. "It has always been her choice."


	2. The Full Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vhena Mahariel tells her current love Zevran and her best friend Leliana the truth about what happened to her when Duncan recruited her.

They had moved the camp to a different spot that night, away from the darkspawn corpses that had attacked them the night before. Vhena sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees as she stared into the fire. Zevran sat next to her, a caring arm going around her shoulder. She leaned into him, appreciating his silence as she sifted through her thoughts. 

"I bet you're wondering about what happened last night…" Vhena said with a sigh. 

"Well, yes, but I figured you would tell me when you were ready," Zevran admitted gently. Vhena sighed again. 

"I've been meaning to tell you ever since what happened in Haven," she confessed. "But the timing was never right. I guess now is as good a time as any…" She rested her head on his chest, staring at the flames as they licked at the wood. She glanced over at Leliana, who was nearby, and motioned her over. "You should hear this too Leliana. You both deserve to hear it." She waited until Leliana sat down to begin her story.

"Tamlen and I grew up together," she began. "We were best friends, and he was right by my side when my father died… Father was Keeper before Marethari," she added. "Tamlen and I were guarding the edge of camp when a few humans came too close. They weren't dressed like hunters, and they were running from… Something. They told us about a ruin to the east, and gave us a stone tablet with written elvish on it."

"Written elvish?" Leliana asked, intrigued. "That's an incredible find." Vhena nodded.

"Now… We didn't believe them, at first…" she continued, more hesitantly this time. "And… You should know I wasn't the same person back then," she added quickly. "I didn't trust humans at all, and I thought you were all the same." She sighed and closed her eyes, the hand that was on Zevran's chest grabbing a fistful of his shirt. "I… I killed one of them, to serve as an example…" she finally said, her voice cracking as she admitted it.

"We all do foolish things when we are young," Zevran assured her, a gentle hand placed on her head. Vhena sighed and seemed to relax a bit, releasing her grip on his shirt and smoothing it out a bit, trying to hide her slightly pink cheeks.

"Tamlen and I followed the path the humans had come through, and there really was some sort of ruin at the end of it," she continued, her voice a bit more steady than before. "Inside the ruin were a number of undead and a few giant spiders, nothing the two of us couldn't handle. But at the back of the ruin, there was some sort of mirror. I… I told him not to touch it!" she cried out suddenly. "I told him to leave the thing alone… But he didn't listen. He touched it, and then he said… Something inside it saw him. There was some sort of… explosion, or something… Next thing I know, I'm waking up back at camp three days later." She sighed again.

"How terrible…" Leliana whispered.

"Duncan had saved me," Vhena continued. "He found me, apparently outside the ruins, and brought me back to the camp where Keeper Marethari used her healing magic to try to save me. And it worked, sort of. The only true cure for the darkspawn taint is to become a Grey Warden. So, the Keeper sent her First with me, Merrill, and we followed Duncan back to the ruin. But the path was full of darkspawn this time, as was the ruin. We found Duncan standing in front of the mirror… He said he could feel the taint inside it, and then he destroyed it… Maybe if I'd gone through it…"

"If you had gone through the mirror, you probably would have ended up just like Tamlen," Leliana said gently. "Thank you for telling me, my friend." Leliana stood again and returned to her tent for the night. 

"You and Tamlen… Were you…?" Zevran asked evasively once Leliana had left. Vhena nodded.

"I loved him," she admitted bluntly. "I wanted to go after him… To find him. But Duncan destroyed the mirror before I could."

"I have to admit, I think that was the better option," Zevran told her, placing a soft kiss on her forehead. "If you had gone through the mirror, we would never have met. I would have had to deal with Alistair alone, and he probably would have killed me for trying to kill him." That made Vhena laugh softly. 

"Well, Duncan saved me in more ways than one," Vhena admitted after a moment. "After losing Tamlen, I'd almost lost my will to fight. When he recruited me, Duncan gave me a reason to keep fighting. To keep moving forward. And… Because of him, I met you." She looked up and kissed him softly. "Thanks for listening. I… I feel better after telling you about him." She rested her head on his chest again, a small smile gracing her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for this story! Drop me a comment or a kudos if you liked it! :D


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